Monday, August 03, 2009

Drink to your health

There's an old saying about what one should do when one visits Rome. Well, it looks like Russian sporting fans are being encouraged to act more like citizens of the United Kingdom when they head to Wales for a World Cup qualifying match.

How so, you may ask? They're being encouraged to drink whiskey, to help prevent the spread of H1N1 flu.

To be fair, the Russian Health Ministry is actually not encouraging citizens to make the trip, because of fears about how the virus is spreading. But that's not going to stop hardy Russians who are itching (and, possibly, coughing) for the upcoming match against the Welsh team. After all, the Russians are just behind Germany when it comes to qualifying points, and that makes the match more important than people's health.

We would be appalled by this, but we see just as flagrant examples of fandom taking over for common sense in our own country. After all, how often can you see fans in Green Bay or New York with their shirts of, during January? Sometimes those images are enough to make us want to reach for whiskey ourselves, either to drink to erase the memories, or to splash into our eyes to prevent having to see them again.

So we say drink up, Russian fans. And let us know if whiskey proves to be effective at stopping the spread of the disease. After all, it could make St. Patrick's Day a day where we could eradicate swine flu once and for all.

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